- Customers are apparently loving Salesforce’s AELA pricing for AI agents
- Short-term losses don’t bother Salesforce, because long-term gains can be made
- Salesforce’s long-term strategy is to add more value to AI agents to increase monetization
Salesforce has said it’s comfortable losing money in the short term on seat-based licensing for agentic AI, because the company is expecting longer-term gains from monetizing customers in new ways.
The company recently launched an Agentic Enterprise License Agreement (AELA), which offers a flat, seat-based pricing model for its AI tools which customers seem to love.
Speaking at the recent Barclays 23rd Annual Global Technology Conference, company Chief Revenue Officer Miguel Milano alluded to the company’s strategy of harnessing its positive customer relationships to boost monetization.
Salesforce is fine with seat-based AI agent pricing
Milano explained (via The Register) that Salesforce is willing to take a profitability risk if customers end up heavily using the platform under the seat-based pricing, seeing this high usage as a sign of customer success. Customers will also be happy with the AELA model if they’re heavy users, offering them greater value for money.
Pay-as-you-go pricing will still be available, but Salesforce expects most customers will probably prefer pre-committed spends on the AELA model to help them manage cashflows and budgets more clearly.
Then, there’s the fact that Salesforce could offer “three or four times or 10 times more value” on agentic AI with upcoming developments, which would make it easier for the company to justify “three times, four times the ability to multiply the monetization on customers.”
Milano explained that a high-net-worth customer on the AELA scheme getting extremely positive value for money is great news for the company. Yes, it might be losing money in the short-term, but “then I have another 20 years to monetize that customer… so I’m not worried about that.”
Although in the short-term customers will largely be happy with flat, seat-based pricing instead of a fluctuating cost based on usage, critics argue the deeper customers get into an ecosystem, the more likely they are to experience vendor lock-in, which could ultimately end up the costlier route to acquire agentic AI capabilities.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rdCLm7JzyRnBJQ97CyGCf6-970-80.jpg
Source link
